This application is a 371 of PCT/US/04/04331 filed Feb. 13, 2004, which is a continuation of 10/366,099 filed Feb. 13, 2003, abandoned, and is a continuation of 10/378,253 filed Mar. 3, 2003, abandoned, and is a continuation of 10/378,531 filed Mar. 3, 2003, abandoned, all of which are hereby incorporated by refrrencc in their entireties.
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to stereoscopic photography and the capture of a matched pair of digitized photo images by use of any single lens digital camera and stores these images in two separate files, one to represent a right-eye view of the intended subject and another for a left-eye view. These two images can then be combined for viewing with various three-dimensional formats such as parallel, cross-eyed viewing, with hand-held viewers, anaglyph or liquid crystal shutter glasses, or lenticular sheet viewing or more particularly to a digital camera guiding track apparatus for accurately taking a stereo pair of digital images of a scene or a subject.
2. Description of the Related Art
Typically, a stereoscopic camera comes with a built-in pair of left and right eye views of a subject and captures two images on a filmstrip for slide viewing. These cameras are old and do not offer the convenience, ease of use, and economy of digital cameras. Since no such stereoscopic digital cameras exist to date, it was important to create a new sliding mechanism that easily allows the capture of left and right digital images by a single lens digital camera.
Although several patents of various apparatus have been designed to provide the ability to take a left and right eye view of a scene or a subject as suggested in prior art U.S. Pat. No. 5,809,355 issued Jan. 10, 1997; U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,049, issued Aug. 30, 1988; U.S. Pat. No. 2,791,950, issued May 1957; U.S. Pat. No. 2,279,443, issued April 1942; U.S. Pat. No. 1,371,439, issued Mar. 15, 1921; and U.S. Pat. No. 713,177, issued Nov. 11, 1902; an ordinary camera with only a single capture lens can be used to sequentially expose respective images of the same scene or subject on a pair of adjacent film frames when the camera is in right and left picture-taking positions. A suitable distance between the right and left photo-capture positions is chosen to obtain a matched pair of images that, when looked at together through an appropriate stereoscopic viewer, shows a stereoscopic three-dimensional image of the original scene or subject. All come with a tripod support for the camera and typically having two pre-set locations for locating the camera in the right and left photo-captures positions.
In addition, other sliding plates are too slow to operate, and capture two left and right views of a subject with a single camera. This is especially hard to do when taking stereoscopic portrait photography with a single camera, because humans are less able to stand still for a long period of time until the user releases, then shifts, and then locks the camera from right to left requiring a new, better, and faster method.